Why Disputed Likenesses?

Here’s just one example: Centuries ago, if we had lived in England, we all would have known who Robin Hood was, and yet, each of us would have had a different image in our minds. However, all these images would have had enough in common for robust conversation. In other words, instead of having pure representation as we tend to have today, we had clusters of understandings. And a cluster of understandings has certain benefits.

Everyone who creates a Disputed Likeness of a character or creature or story from Kcymaerxthaere is helping themselves—and the community—live in a richer, more ambiguous space of representation: as the hearers of the stories, we have the pleasure and responsibility of conjuring it up for ourselves.

Disputed Likeness are representations of the characters, stories and worlds of Kcymaerxthaere , a global work of multidimensional story telling. From time to time Eames Demetrios, the Geographer-at-Large for Kcymaerxthaere, asks his fellow Geographers around the world to draw or sketch their interpretation of the stories. The idea is that there are a few wrong answers but many many wonderful and very different right answers. This images give you a feeling—though not a definite one—of what their subjects look like.